Daily Reading
The Battle for Your Story
January 5, 2025
Satan continues to use the evil that he himself creates to tell us a very different story. In his version, good is gained through our own understanding, not through a relationship with God. Life is gained by appropriating what we can see with our own eyes and by controlling any unknown Arrows that may strike us rather than living in the bigger Story God is telling. Jesus invites us to thirst. Satan invites us to control through performance of one kind or another.
His first goal, of course, is to make sure we never meet the Prince who is Jesus of Nazareth or experience a taste of the Great Ball. But once we have, Satan’s second and lifelong purpose with each of us is to make sure we never know who we really are; indeed, to keep us living the life of a cellar maid rather than a princess. Even though we who are believers have tasted the Ball and the love of the Prince in beginning ways, the voices of the stepsisters continue to speak to us in tones varying from whispers to shouts; and like Cinderella, each of us has our own years as a “cellar maid” that the enemy can whisper to us about, causing us to wonder if this isn’t who we really are after all.
The point is: We do not experience the story of our lives on rationally or emotionally neutral ground.
When I was young, I read a little book called The Devil and Don Camillo. It was the story of a Catholic priest whose heart was set to follow God. On one of his shoulders sat a small devil and on the other an angel, both of whom traveled with him wherever he went. As he encountered the events of each day, each spirit whispered intently in his ear its interpretation of the event and how it should be handled. This is perhaps as good an illustration of our situation as any I have come across. Satan’s ministers constantly whisper to us their interpretation of the story of our lives in soul-specific ways.
They use the events of our particular journey and bits and pieces of the lines spoken to us by parents, ministers, sweethearts, spouses, and perfect strangers. They weave these lines together into our particular Message of the Arrows that says there is no Sacred Romance, no Larger Story that God is directing that is very good. They seduce us to the smaller stories of control and indulgence that so many of us find ourselves living, afraid to venture out any farther on the Christian journey. Satan is constantly at work deconstructing the Sacred Romance in our heart so that he may more easily seduce us to the smaller stories he is telling.
Given all this, it becomes crucial that we become a generation of storytellers who are both recapturing the glory and joy of the Sacred Romance even as we tell each other our particular stories, so that we can help each other, through God’s Spirit, see his plan of redemption at work in us.
Want More? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today
His first goal, of course, is to make sure we never meet the Prince who is Jesus of Nazareth or experience a taste of the Great Ball. But once we have, Satan’s second and lifelong purpose with each of us is to make sure we never know who we really are; indeed, to keep us living the life of a cellar maid rather than a princess. Even though we who are believers have tasted the Ball and the love of the Prince in beginning ways, the voices of the stepsisters continue to speak to us in tones varying from whispers to shouts; and like Cinderella, each of us has our own years as a “cellar maid” that the enemy can whisper to us about, causing us to wonder if this isn’t who we really are after all.
The point is: We do not experience the story of our lives on rationally or emotionally neutral ground.
When I was young, I read a little book called The Devil and Don Camillo. It was the story of a Catholic priest whose heart was set to follow God. On one of his shoulders sat a small devil and on the other an angel, both of whom traveled with him wherever he went. As he encountered the events of each day, each spirit whispered intently in his ear its interpretation of the event and how it should be handled. This is perhaps as good an illustration of our situation as any I have come across. Satan’s ministers constantly whisper to us their interpretation of the story of our lives in soul-specific ways.
They use the events of our particular journey and bits and pieces of the lines spoken to us by parents, ministers, sweethearts, spouses, and perfect strangers. They weave these lines together into our particular Message of the Arrows that says there is no Sacred Romance, no Larger Story that God is directing that is very good. They seduce us to the smaller stories of control and indulgence that so many of us find ourselves living, afraid to venture out any farther on the Christian journey. Satan is constantly at work deconstructing the Sacred Romance in our heart so that he may more easily seduce us to the smaller stories he is telling.
Given all this, it becomes crucial that we become a generation of storytellers who are both recapturing the glory and joy of the Sacred Romance even as we tell each other our particular stories, so that we can help each other, through God’s Spirit, see his plan of redemption at work in us.
Want More? Order your copy of The Sacred Romance today